All Stories, in the End
by Jael K
Summary: Mick knows that stories can't really fix things. They can't bring people back, and they can't mend broken hearts. Or can they? (CaptainCanary and platonic ColdWave)
1. Chapter 1

**Author's** **Note**: So, today is my three-year ficaversary for Legends! This fandom has been so wonderful to me and brought me so many new friends-and got me back into writing fiction, which has had excellent repercussions in many ways-even professionally. In honor of the anniversary, here's a little tribute to stories and their power. Hope you enjoy it! (Please note that there are two parts.) J

* * *

_We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything." _

**― ****Charles de Lint **

* * *

_Once, Rick had resented the pirate queen who'd drawn his partner, his friend, his blood brother, into this mad quest. _

_To be honest, she hadn't been a pirate queen at the time. And she hadn't been trying to lure him, either. She'd been a pretty face and an untold story when she'd joined the rest of the old captain's motley crew of hand-picked losers. But Rick had seen the light of curiosity in Sean's eyes when he looked at her, and he should have known then._

_This wasn't going to go the way he thought it was going to go._

* * *

Mick sighed and put down the papers he'd taken from their locked box in his room on the Waverider. There was a reason he'd put this story away unfinished. More than one reason, really.

But today, Haircut had actually brought up Snart while they were all sitting in the galley, telling his new squeeze Spooky Girl about the lost Legends—one of the lost Legends—and it'd stirred up all sorts of memories.

Not for just Mick, either. He'd been looking at Blondie when Haircut had dropped the name "Snart," and he'd seen the stillness in her that was more telling than even a flinch. It was what Blondie did when she was holding back a flinch, really. Mick had seen the lines of pain around her eyes, and he saw her look away quickly, rising to her feet when it became apparent the oblivious Ray wasn't going to leave off his story.

He'd thought about stopping her as she swiftly left the room, then thought about following her. But Sara had been a bit—touchy? probably wasn't very healthy to be calling a former assassin 'touchy,' even in his own thoughts—since she'd split with Bureau Chick, and maybe she needed the space. Mick let her go.

But that didn't mean he didn't think about it. And when he'd returned to his room, he'd pulled out this story, rereading it with the usual feeling of somewhat awkward regret.

* * *

_Sean Lance had a reputation some might call cold. Icy, even. He'd built that reputation very carefully over his lifetime. Being cold and careful kept you safe. He was even cold with Rick Mor, his partner in crime and the closest thing he had to a best friend. Rick had led the same sort of life he had. He was pretty sure the other man understood._

_But. Lara._

_The blond badass hadn't been anything he'd planned on. Certainly, he hadn't planned on falling for her. That was stupid. That kind of shit didn't happen in real life. _

_But ….she'd worked her way under his skin somehow. Made him want to be a better person—and wasn't that a riot? _

* * *

Mick sighed again. It's not like he'd known for a fact that Snart had that kind of…_feelings_…about Blondie. But he'd put the pieces together, from both before and after Snart had…after the Oculus, and goddamned if it didn't all fit. Snart deciding to go all hero-like (which probably had a good bit to do with Allen, too), choosing the team over Mick (who was willing to admit, now, that his actions on the Acheron had been pretty damned stupid) and then…and then…

And Blondie's reaction, afterward. It wasn't like Mick really wanted to…oh, sit shiva, for Len and everything that entailed. But especially after Savage was toast (literally, a thought which still gave him some satisfaction), he might have liked to sit down with a drink and a friend…someone else who'd known Snart…and remembered, just a little.

But Sara had avoided the topic like the fuckin' plague, and she'd also gone from someone who seemed kinda uncertain about hooking up with anyone to flinging herself at any woman who seemed the least bit interested. Never guys, although Mick knew she liked guys too, and that was maybe a little telling in its own right.

Just because Mick never liked to talk about feelings didn't mean he didn't understand them in his own way. In others, anyway.

* * *

_Lara Sahfer knew she was the deadliest person on this ship. That went without question. Far deadlier than the priestess and her boytoy. Deadlier than the alchemist and his apprentice. Deadlier than the eager crusader or their hapless captain._

_And deadlier than the clever thief and his partner._

_The partner was dangerous, but she knew the type. He was content to let his friend be the brains of their team. But the intriguing Sean Lance…_

_She didn't know what to make of him._

_Though she _did_ know he kept watching her ass given the merest opportunity._

* * *

If Mick was being honest with himself (and he tried to be, these days), he'd started putting this thing down on paper first because he could see Blondie struggling and couldn't figure out how to manage the words to talk to her about Snart—even if she'd let him.

And in stories, you could give someone—more than one someone—the happy ending they didn't get in real life. Maybe someday, Sara would even be ready to read it.

Then all sorts of shit had happened, and Mick had stopped writing again. He'd been stuck at the bottom of the ocean for years, even if it didn't seem like so long. And then Ghost Snart—who hadn't been real, but who had seemed real at the time—had showed up and snarked off about even the hint of the feelings Mick was starting to acknowledge.

And _then,_ that asshole in the Legion (well, more of an asshole than real Snart—he was still convinced that Legion Snart hadn't been real Snart) had showed up. And Mick decided, painfully, that he wasn't ready to write about even fictionalized Len for a while.

He locked the pages away, taking the lockbox with him when Rip had taken the Waverider back—and bringing it back with him when they'd stolen the ship in return. He added a few more bits and pieces here and there—especially, with a certain grumpy annoyance, when he sensed Sara's interest in Bureau Chick, who really couldn't be more different from Len. (It'd felt like a betrayal in a way, though he'd never tell her that. Snart was gone.)

And then there was Leo. Leo, who merrily flirted with Sara (and just about everyone else). Leo, who everyone seemed to like. Personable Leo, the hugger, who was the only Snart the newbies had ever met. And it seemed like everyone but him forgot about real Snart just a little bit more.

He quietly tucked the pages away and hadn't taken them out since. Until today.

* * *

_The voyage had lots of ups and downs. Rick knew that; hell, he'd caused a lot of them. He'd committed mutiny against the captain himself when the man had thrown his own lack of status on the ship and elsewhere back in his face. And he'd paid for that, paid more than a lot of those fools would ever know. _

_But the thing he regretted most was that it'd cost him Sean's friendship._

_Oh, he'd been angry first. Enraged, even. That bastard had hauled him out of the pirate haven where they could have been kings, just because the captain and Lara were in trouble. And then he'd chosen the crew instead of Rick in the mutiny. Because of Lara, Rick thought. And then Sean had marooned him on that desert island and left him behind._

_It'd taken time and distance to see things clearly again._

_By then, it was too late._

* * *

Snart had definitely had a thing for Sara—Mick had known the man long enough and well enough to have seen him show interest in men, women, and folks who mighta been either or both, though Len had always been real quiet about any lovers he took. Still, he knew the signs.

But that hadn't gone how Mick thought, either. He'd figured the two of them would have a fling. Get it outta their systems. Snart didn't have a heart any more than Mick did, and it wasn't like he and Sara were gonna fall for each other or something. That was story shit.

Mick looked down at the pages in front of him and sighed yet again.

Instead, Snart had circled around Blondie like he was planning a heist, careful and curious, and Blondie had reacted much the same way. They'd started spending time together, playing cards, and while Mick had wondered what was going on there a few times, he hadn't asked. Even when Snart had gone back to get Sara in Russia, even when he'd insisted on saving her and Rip in Star City, and, yeah, even when he'd iced Mick in the engine room.

A few days back, Mick had overheard Zari and Charlie talking about Sara and Bureau Chick, about how (they thought) Sara's tendency to happily break rules and apologize later, if at all, had finally taken a toll on the two and led to the breakup, along with Sara's resistance to becoming more…domesticated.

Snart wouldn't have tried to change her. Snart had liked her just the way she was.

* * *

_Sean couldn't help being fascinated by the assassin the captain had recruited. OK, she was gorgeous, attractive in a way that seemed designed to appeal to his sense of danger, and he wouldn't have minded having some sort of a fling with her. But flings were all he did, these days, and dipping a toe (so to speak) into those particularly dangerous waters while on this ship seemed like a bad idea._

_But that didn't keep him from watching. Or them from playing cards. Or talking. Or watching each other's back. Or..._

_Oh, hell._

* * *

There were a lot of reasons Mick himself wasn't fond of Bureau Chick. (He knew perfectly well what her name was, he just liked to pretend otherwise.) But her attempts at changing who Blondie was…well, Mick had had too many people trying to change him to what they wanted him to be over the years. People who generally didn't get what'd _made _him who he was. He didn't take kindly to it.

And he didn't take kindly to it happening to his friends, either.

Oh, sure, he'd changed, by this point. But he'd chosen to change, himself. It was different.

Now that Bureau Chick was out of the picture…

Mick sighed, putting a hand down on the partially written story. Snart was still dead. Nothing would change that. Ever.

No matter how much he tried to fix things in a stupid story.

* * *

_Lara had been through a lot in the past few years. She wasn't looking for a lover, or even a fling. She hadn't been down that particular road since before she'd died and come back, and she wasn't ready for it now. Maybe she never would be._

_But. Sean._

_The thief didn't seem to care that she'd killed for hire. Didn't seem scared of her bloodlust or intimidated by her history. He just seemed intrigued. And, somehow, he had an uncanny sense of why she wanted to be...better. She got the feeling that he did, too._

_She wasn't scared of anything. But..._

_She thought maybe she should be scared of this. Not because it was bad._

_Because it could be all too _good_._

* * *

Mick had just pulled out the pages of another story, his latest sci-fi epic, the one he'd asked New Girl to read sometime soon, when Gideon's voice echoed through the ship.

"Captain Lance would like everyone on the bridge," she announced, sounding just a little harried. That wasn't good. "Immediately."

Then the ship shook. That definitely wasn't good. Mick cursed, dropping the pages on the desk and turning for the door.

He didn't even consider that he'd left the other story out, too.

* * *

It was quite a bit later when Zari wandered into the room, smiling a bit as the door slid open to admit her, per Mick's orders. She was glad he'd come to trust her that much. She didn't think Mick trusted many, and it felt like a rare and rather precious accolade.

Even if it was mostly so she could play editor.

The unexplained temporal storm earlier still had the ship in disarray, but there wasn't really anything she could do about that at the moment. Mick and Sara and Ray were going over temporal data that was nonsense to her and the others were dealing with some variety of seasickness. Time sickness. Whatever. It'd been caused by the ship's motion through the storm, so close enough. Zari had tried, but poor Charlie, who'd had a really bad reaction to it, had refused any help at all, locking herself in her room and snarling through the door.

Zari hummed to herself as she looked over Mick's desk and the old typewriter he still insisted on using. There were a few different piles of papers, but they'd been knocked around a bit by the turbulence. Looked like one had slid to the side, and another toward the front of the desk. Which one had Mick had in mind?

The one at the front caught her eye, so she picked it up, gathering the pages into a pile, turning to find a seat amidst the clutter of the room and settling in to read.

_Once, Rick had resented the pirate queen..._

* * *

_The cult that'd started this whole damned thing had them again, even after all the crew's plans and attempts to change things. They had Rick, minions strapping him down into a chair while one of the cult leaders—the one who'd broken him the first time—stared at him thoughtfully. Rick stared back, determined not to show any fear._

_Maybe, he thought, even as the manacles closed around his wrists, Sean and Lara had gotten away. They'd been holed up again, like they did sometimes. Neither of them was stupid. They might have gotten away._

_Gods, he hoped they'd gotten away._

* * *

Zari had completely lost track of time when Mick came through the door and stopped, acknowledging her presence with a grunt. She blinked, slowly coming back to reality as he ambled toward the desk and gave it a cursory look—before suddenly freezing and then spinning to stare at her. And the pages she was reading.

"You can't read that," Mick told her abruptly, something odd in his tone, even as Zari tightened her grip on the papers involuntarily. He sounded almost...upset. Embarrassed? _Mick_?

"It was right on your desk. I thought it was what you wanted me to read." She studied him, then looked back down at the story, letting out a long breath. She liked Mick's writing, but she'd really been caught up in this one.

"Mick, this is great," she told him, lifting her eyes again and giving the pages a shake for emphasis. "You've got this...this incredible romance going on between these awesome, real, flawed characters, the thief and the assassin, and this amazing...platonic soulmates thing with the male protagonist and his friend at the same time." She shook her head, impressed. "And you don't see enough of that in fiction, especially in cases where the romantic relationship doesn't eclipse the platonic one and they're both good stories on their own. It's great."

Mick stared at her, expression still opaque. Zari stared back a moment, then rifled through the papers. Now that she was near the end, she didn't think there was enough...yes, it just left off there, right in the middle of a scene.

"You need to finish it," she insisted. "And there are a few places you just fade to black...and I want to see how it ends!"

But he turned away then, toward the desk, shoulders set.

"I can't," he said, tossing the words back over his shoulder at her. "He died." A pause. "The end."

Zari blinked again. "Who? Rick? Sean? You can't..."

But her voice trailed off as she saw Mick leaning on his desk, hands gripping the wood and knuckles white, staring at his typewriter like it'd hurt him. But it hadn't; she had, somehow, by sticking her nose in where it didn't belong, even though she hadn't meant to. So, after another minute, she got to her feet, quietly putting the pages down where she'd been sitting and taking a step toward the door.

Mick didn't move.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. And left.

* * *

_The others had decided to destroy the cult, and possibly the island it claimed as its base as well. Sean couldn't say he was surprised. He wasn't fond at all of how much power the group claimed, far more than they'd originally suspected. And now that they knew the cult was supporting the warlord they'd vowed to stop, it was necessary if they ever wanted to complete that mission._

_Still, he could see Lara watching him out of the corner of her eye as all the others chimed in, agreeing to this plan. Even Rick was in—though, of course, he had more reason than most to hate the cult._

"_We set out on this mission to stop Vindictus and save the world. To become legends and change our fates," the crusader, Edmund, said earnestly. "That mission hasn't changed."_

_Sean made a scoffing noise. "This is madness," he said, glancing around at all of them before letting his gaze light on Lara—and an almost-smile touch his mouth. "I like it."_

_She smiled back at him._

_Behind her, Rick rolled his eyes. But the other man was smiling too._

* * *

_He died._

Zari frowned to herself as she strolled the corridors of the ship, pondering Mick's reaction and his words. Given that no main character had died yet in that story, it was apparent that the tale must have been based on a true one. But...

She stopped dead in her tracks.

Lara, assassin turned (at some point) pirate queen. Sean, the thief. Rick, his friend and partner.

_Oh._

It seemed to fit. She only knew the sketchiest bits of what the Legends had been up to when their original captain had first recruited them, but she should have figured this out sooner. The power of Mick's tale had obfuscated the reality behind it. And she knew almost nothing about Leonard, Mick's former partner, just that Mick missed him and that he'd died, doing something that had saved the world.

Had he and Sara really been a thing? Almost a thing? Zari nibbled her lip, thinking. She didn't think she'd heard Sara so much as mention his name. Ever. Which...actually did point more toward some powerful feelings there rather than the opposite.

Zari thought for a few more minutes. Then she turned toward the bridge.

* * *

_Lara knew that Rick had taken refuge in one of his hidey holes in a cargo bay, probably drinking his way through more of the captain's rum. She'd figured Sean was with him._

_Which was fine. Really. After the thief pulled a gun on her after the cult members had taken their friends, she wasn't sure she really _wanted _to talk to him. Oh, she could have had that gun away from him in a heartbeat, and he'd backed down awfully quickly, given how stubborn she knew he was, but it was the principle of the thing. _

_She'd been furious. And heartbroken, though she wasn't ready to tell anyone that and probably never would be. She'd thought they were friends, at least. Maybe...maybe skirting around something more?_

_But he wasn't in the cargo bay with Rick, after all, as it turned out. He was here. At her cabin door. Now. Looking at her with eyes that had a veneer of his habitual attitude over even more uncertainty. It probably said something, too, that she recognized that._

_Sean cleared his throat. "Hi," he managed. "Can I come in?"_

_Lara leaned on the doorway and glared at him. "What do you want?"_

"_To talk." A look from under lowered lashes. Damn him. "And apologize."_

"_You could do that right here."_

"_Mmm." He glanced away. "Maybe I want to say more than that."_

_She shouldn't let him in. She should shut the door in his handsome face. She should..._

_Lara stepped back, letting him in._

* * *

Sara was sitting in the captain's chair. Oh, there was no particular flying to be done right now, but she wasn't in the mood to go back to her quarters. Her empty quarters, with no sign of Ava in them. More evidence that she'd fucked up for real this time.

Or not. Frankly, Sara kept waffling between anger and annoyance at the other woman's conviction that Sara needed to change and grief over the loss of someone else she'd cared for. OK, loved. Sure, Ava was back in the Bureau offices, healthy and fine compared to some of the people Sara had lost, but Sara had lost her regardless.

Or maybe she'd never really had her to begin with. Had they both been operating under false pretenses? Ava, thinking Sara would settle and become a good little soldier, or wife, or both? Sara, thinking that Ava would stop wanting her to? Would stop wanting to make her over in a different image?

Sara wasn't sure how long she'd been there, slumped in the chair with her jaw in her hand, eyes closed, thoughts and feelings circling in her head, when she heard the footstep. Closer than she'd usually let someone get, but she'd let her guard down, knowing that Gideon would warn her if it wasn't a friend.

"What's up, Z?" she asked, seeing Zari there, watching her with a rather enigmatic expression. "Everything OK?"

The other woman shrugged, moving closer and studying Sara as if seeing her in a new light. Sara was just about to ask again when Zari glanced away, nodded to herself, and looked back.

"Who was Leonard Snart?" she asked, point blank.

Sara was pretty sure she didn't move, but for a moment, she almost felt like she'd reeled. "What?"

"Mick's old partner." Z tilted her head. "One of the original members of the Legends, right? But no one ever talks about him. Why is that?"

_Get him out of here. _

_No. _

_Just do it._

Sara swallowed. "He died," she said abruptly, knowing her voice sounded harsh. "What's there to talk about?"

"Other people have too, died or left, and the team talks about _them_."

"Why are you asking this now?" Sara's hands tightened on the arms of the chair. "Mick..."

Zari seemed to consider. She looked a little like she regretted bringing this up, but she was too stubborn to back down now. Sara knew that well. "He wrote something about him. Snart. Well, you and Snart."

"Me and...Snart." She should say there was no "her and Snart." She should.

"I wasn't meant to read it, but I didn't know that. And the story just...ended. And when I asked, Mick said he died."

What on earth could Mick have written? How would he even have known...?

_...what the future might hold for me...and you...and me and you._

Zari's eyes are direct. "Did you love him?"

_I might have._

"I don't want to talk about this now." Her broken edges and Leonard's, they'd somehow fit together.

"Sara..."

"Don't push it, Z."

* * *

_The bomb in the center of the island wasn't working right. Someone needed to hold the button down for the connection to be made, for it to blow the whole thing to kingdom come._

_The crusader had been going to do it. But he was the sort of guy the world needed, one able and willing to help people, to fix things that needed fixing. Not like Rick, with all his damages. It'd been an easy decision to knock the other man out and take his place. And the captain—pragmatic, despite all his fine talk—hadn't hesitated to take Edmund and leave Rick there, hand on the bomb, considering his fate. _

_But then:_

"_Rick!"_

* * *

After Zari left, Mick had stayed in his room for a while, stewing, discontented and angry at the memories. He didn't blame her—he'd left the damned story out, after all, and she didn't know enough about what had happened to connect the dots right away. But, still, it'd been a stupid thing to write down in the first place.

With most books, anyway, writing things didn't make them come true.

After a while, he left the room, trying to pretend nothing had happened. He had dinner with Haircut in the galley. He worked out a bit in the training room. He watched an episode of "The X-Files" with Charlie, who'd laughed so hard at the show's version of shapeshifters that she'd nearly gotten sick again.

Then he'd slowly sauntered back to his room, wondering if he should go find New Girl and apologize.

But there was someone else in his room.

Blondie was sitting in one of the chairs, knees pulled up to her chin, a posture that looked more vulnerable than nearly anything he'd seen from her in a long time. She looked up as he entered, and he was startled to see red-rimmed eyes—and a sheaf of papers in her hand.

Damnit. He'd left that locked up again. Honest, he had.

Mick looked back at Sara, who smiled a little at him.

"I did learn how to pick locks," she murmured. "It wasn't hard to find."

"New Girl."

"Sort of. She said you wrote something about...about Leonard. And me. I didn't realize what it was. And I shouldn't have gone into your things, but I. Well." She looked down at the pages. "I wasn't at my best. I'm sorry, Mick."

Mick dragged in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. They've been through too much together to let this get to him, especially since it's so unusual. "S'OK." He took a seat himself, watching her.

Sara met his eyes, then glanced away. She looked at the pages again and the quiet drew out.

Then: "This is really how you saw...it? Us?"

Her and Snart, she meant. Mick hesitated.

"Saw what could have been," he said finally. "Was I wrong?"

A long silence.

"No," Sara admitted. "No. I think...I think we could have been something...something really good. If we'd had more time. Isn't that how it goes?" Her fingers contracted, wrinkling the papers, but then she smoothed them out, handing them back to him. "And you knew Leonard longer than I did, better than I did. If this is what you saw..."

"Eh. In _some _ways, I knew him better. People change."

"True." Sara sighed, getting up from the chair. "I'm sorry, Mick," she said again. "I shouldn't have just come in here and rummaging around. That was beyond rude. I just...needed to see..."

She shook her head, as if trying to get a grip, then gave him an arch look. "No sex scenes though, I noticed."

Mick could actually feel his face heat. "That woulda been _way _too weird."

Sara laughed a bit evilly—and a bit sadly, which was an odd mix. But still, she just patted his arm again, sighed, and hurried out the door.

Mick watched her go. He looked down at the pages in his hands, then put them down on the desk and studied them for a long moment.

Then he fed a clean piece of paper into his typewriter, nodded to himself, and started to type.

Time to give those losers—all of them—a happy ending.

You could do that, in stories.


	2. Chapter 2

**About three months later, Waverider time**

"Heard you been writing again. Since I...well."

The words were casually said, in the usual drawl, but Mick could hear a number of things in them. Regret, for having been gone. A pleased attention, because Snart had always accepted his writing in a way others hadn't. Amusement, probably because New Girl had almost certainly been the one to tell him that. And guilt, he thought, for so many reasons.

Snart stood in the doorway to Mick's room and looked around, his expression still and not real informative. But he hadn't commented on the clutter or anything else, focusing after a moment on the typewriter still sitting on the desk.

Mick nodded, watching his long-lost friend. "I'm doing the final edits on a manuscript that's goin' to a publisher," he volunteered. "Got two other books out, too. Sold pretty well."

The other man actually smiled.

The temporal storms that had started that day about three months ago had gotten worse and worse, while both the Legends and the Time Bureau had tried to figure out what was causing them and were kept busy trying to clean up their aftermath.

Finally, they'd figured out the storms had been touched off by the deepest part of the time stream trying to rid itself of an irritant, something that shouldn't be there.

And that irritant had turned out to be Leonard Snart.

The real one. Now back on the Waverider, confirmed by Gideon, whole and healthy—albeit with an uncanny sense for temporal disturbances and a weird ability to reset time a few seconds here and there. They hadn't quite fully sorted through the repercussions of that power yet.

Snart was...different, now. Apparently, he'd been at least somewhat aware of the passage of time while he was stuck in the...well, Haircut called it a time pearl, a barrier the time stream had formed between itself and the annoyance. It hadn't felt like three years to him—more of an odd, lengthy waking dream—but it had given him lots of time, he said, to think.

His personality was a step closer to Leo now, in a way, though he was still extremely capable of pointed snark and sass, as Haircut had already found out. But he was also a little less cold, and a great deal more thoughtful in a way that didn't seem to have much to do with heists. (As far as Mick knew, anyway. Could be both.)

Now, Snart was looking at the manuscript on the desk with a definite glint of curiosity in his eyes. "Yeah?" His hand hovered over the neat stack of papers. "Can I…"

Mick hesitated. And Snart curled his fingers again and withdrew his hand in that smooth way he had, tucking it behind his back and acting like he'd never reached out to begin with.

Classic Snart.

Well, Mick was done with that old dynamic. He'd lost too much, and he'd been so lucky to get some of it back. Abruptly, he reached out too, scooping up the papers and extending them to Snart, who took them with a blink of surprise.

Mick waved a hand at them a bit awkwardly. "Uh," he said, "that one wasn't originally for publication. New Girl…Zari…talked me into finishing it and sending it out. And Blondie gave me…permission. Even wrote some bits."

Snart had frowned, just a little. "Why would Sara have to…"

But he stopped, fingers tightening on the papers. And Mick sighed inwardly.

When they'd pulled Snart from the time stream…time pearl, whatever…there'd been more than one person who'd been intently watching the groggy, dazed crook when he first came face to face with Sara, who'd been staring at him like she was seeing a ghost.

But all they'd gotten was a breathed, barely audible "Sara" from Snart before the man had crumpled and Mick had carried him off to the medbay. Once he'd woken and gotten a clean bill of health, well, it seemed they were rarely in the same place at the same time. In fact, Mick was pretty sure they were avoiding each other.

Which made no sense at all. New Girl agreed.

Well, maybe this will get them to pull their heads out of their asses. Worth the embarrassment for the chance of that.

* * *

"_You nearly died, you jackass," Lara whispered to Sean, standing there on the boat with her hands wrapped in his coat, holding him close. Not as close as she'd like, but...even after everything, she knew he still had his lines that were tough to cross, still had his damages, his own rocky shores. "What the hell did you think you were doing?"_

"_I couldn't just let him die." Sean didn't seem to mind that she was holding him. In fact, his hands slipped up and around her shoulders, pulling her closer too. His blue eyes looked seriously down into hers, making it hard to breathe._

"_Of course you couldn't." Lara took a deep breath. "But..."_

_But then Sean was kissing her, right out on the deck in the open, a kiss that was everything their desperate kiss while he was holding the bomb hadn't been. A promise, not a farewell; an invitation and a dare. Lara tightened her hold on him and kissed him back, the rest of the world fading around them, focused for once on the here and the now...and just maybe, a little bit on the future._

_And if there were a couple of wolf whistles from Rick and the others...well, they just ignored them._

* * *

Mick had tried to be unobtrusive about watching the door to Snart's new room. Fortunately, since it was right down the hall from the galley, he could just lurk in there and listen, occasionally peek outside. He'd been nursing the same beer for a while when New Girl slipped in, too, eyes brightening as she saw him.

"Snart's reading it?" she whispered. He'd passed on the message through Gideon.

"Yeah." Mick shifted a bit uncomfortably.

Maybe he shouldn't have let Sara add the sexier bits. But there was no way in hell he was doin' it, not with _this _book, and his publisher expected a certain amount of that. Sara, at least, had seemed to get a kick out of it—just how much of a kick, he'd decided he really didn't want to know.

He also didn't think he wanted to know how much of it had really happened—though he suspected, at least, that the kiss at the Oculus/bomb had.

New Girl looked pleased. "This has to be the kick in the ass they both need," she said.

" 'Less we were all wrong."

"We weren't. Sara said so. Right?"

"That was before Snart came back." He thought about it a minute. "Easier to say that when it was just a 'mighta been' and not a 'could really be.'"

New Girl got an odd, considering expression on her face. Mick wondered what—maybe who—she was thinking about. "Yeah," she acknowledged after a minute. "That's true. But..."

There was a sound. A door opening. Mick and New Girl—he really should start calling her Zari, he supposed, or Z—exchanged a look, waited a moment, and then peeked out the door.

Snart was headed down the corridor. Toward Sara's quarters.

Z made a happy sort of humming noise, waiting until Snart turned the corner before stepping out of the galley. Mick followed her as they both slunk down the hall, pausing just before the corner. Close enough to Sara's doorway.

They heard it slide open.

"Len." Sara sounded a little surprised. Not unhappy. Thoughtful. Waiting.

"Sara." Had he really said her name like that before? Ugh. Mick couldn't believe he hadn't noticed _that _tone. That was get-a-room territory all on its own.

Another pause. They heard Snart step inside, heard the door close...mostly. It was cracked, just enough to hear what was being said, as long as they snuck a bit closer and the occupant used normal voices. Mick heard Z whisper a "thank you" to Gideon—who, in her usual way, knew perfectly well what was going on around her ship.

"Mick apparently thinks we had some sort of great torrid romance going on," they heard Snart say to Sara. There was amusement in his voice and Mick breathed out a sigh of relief. So, he wasn't mad or too embarrassed.

There was amusement in Sara's voice, too, as she responded. "You read it."

"Yeah." A pause. A long one. "He said you did too." A shorter pause. "Said you even added...a few things."

Sara's laugh was low and rippling. Z elbowed Mick, who ignored her.

"Wishful thinking," the captain said quietly. "I thought you were gone."

"Hmmmm. I'm back now." Pause. "Can't change the earlier story. But maybe could...start a new one?"

Z clapped a hand over her mouth, her grin obvious. She darted a glance at Mick, eyes shining.

"What sort of story, though?" Sara's tone was teasing...but not without a hint of real question. "Comedy? Adventure?" Pause. "Torrid romance?"

"Well. Kinda partial to the idea of that last, at the moment." Snart's own tone was low, a bit rough. "Not too late?"

Z stepped forward, listening intently.

And Gideon firmly slid the door shut the rest of the way.

"Hey!"

"What happens next, Ms. Tomaz, you certainly do not need to be privy to." Gideon sounded just a little prissy.

"I most certainly do!"

But Mick grinned, reaching out to put a hand on her arm and pull her back toward the galley. He knew Snart, and he knew Sara. And he figured they'd be just fine.

"They gotta write their own story now," he told her. "Let's leave 'em to it."

* * *

"_We're all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?"_

— **The Doctor**


End file.
